Lesson 2: Contour Lines, Texture and Construction

1:53 PM, Wednesday October 27th 2021

Lesson 2 homework - Album on Imgur

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Post with 16 views. Lesson 2 homework

So here is my homework for lesson 2. It was a long one because of me being ill, but I am glad that I managed to finish it. The hardest part was probably Dissections. In the From Intersections I chose easy rout, and drew only forms itself, I found it a little confusing to add intersections itself, so i was afraid to ruin finished pages. The easiest exercice was Organic Arrows and Organic Intersections. Looking forward for next lesson.

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7:48 PM, Saturday October 30th 2021

I'll be the TA handling your Lesson 2 critique.

You're making progress towards understanding the concepts introduced in this lesson and hopefully this critique will help you in your future attempts.

  • Starting off in the arrows section your lines are looking smoothly and confidently drawn. You're doing a good job maintaining a consistent width as your arrows widen while moving closer to the viewer and with more mileage you'll become more consistent. It's good to see that you're trying to implement line weight, just remember that you want to keep your applications subtle and you'll become consistent with mileage. here are some things to look out for when applying it. I'd like you to experiment more with foreshortening in your future attempts, by utilizing it in both the arrows themselves as well as the negative space between their curves we can create a stronger illusion of an object moving through 3D space as demonstrated here.

  • Moving into the organic forms with contours exercise some of your forms are getting a bit too complex. We want to create our forms with both ends being the same size and to avoid any pinching, bloating, or stretching along the form's length as discussed here. You're keeping your line work confident here which is great, if you feel uncomfortable working with contours still don't stress with more mileage it'll become more natural. Speaking of contours I'd like you to try and shift the degree of your contours more. The degree of a contour line basically represents the orientation of that cross-section in space, relative to the viewer, and as we slide along the sausage form, the cross section is either going to open up (allowing us to see more of it) or turn away from the viewer (allowing us to see less), as shown here.

  • In the texture exercises you're focusing largely on outlines and negative space rather than cast shadows created by forms along the texture itself. This makes it difficult to create gradients with implied information which we could then use to create focal points in more complex pieces, by doing so we can prevent our viewers from being visually overwhelmed with too much detail. For more on the importance of focusing on cast shadows read here. I'd also like to quickly direct you to this image which shows that when we're working with thin line like textures if we outline and fill the shadow we will create a much more dynamic texture than simply drawing lines.

  • In the form intersections section you don't actually attempt to draw the intersections which you were instructed to do (and you also mention in your submission). Ultimately you're not creating priceless pieces of art here, you're doing exercises and trying to learn. If you draw intersections and they're incorrect you'll learn from the mistakes. Not drawing them at all won't allow yourself to learn anything.

  • While wrapping up your submission with the organic intersections exercise you do a great job demonstrating that your sense of 3D space is developing as your forms begin to wrap around each other believably. You're keeping your forms simple and easy to work with which is a good strategy to help produce good results. When drawing your shadows you don't push them far enough to cast, instead they mostly hug the form creating them, try pushing them further. It appears like your shadows aren't following a consistent light source, I recommend pushing your light source to the top left or right corner of the page to start with, it's easier than working with a light directly above your form pile.

I won't be moving you on to the next lesson just yet, each lesson builds upon each other and I'd like to make sure you understand a few of these concepts a bit more before potentially creating more problems down the road.

With that being said I'd like you to please re-read and complete:

  • 2 pages of the Form Intersections exercise with an attempt at intersections being drawn. We don't expect them to be perfect or correct all but we do want you to at least try.

Once you've completed the pages mentioned above reply to this critique with a link to them, I'll go over them and address anything that needs to be worked on and once you've shown you're ready for the next lesson I'll move you on.

I look forward to seeing your work.

Next Steps:

Complete 2 pages of the Form Intersections exercise.

When finished, reply to this critique with your revisions.
1:47 PM, Sunday October 31st 2021

Hello, thank you for your review. I considered your critique and here is my attempt of form intersections, I just used the same pages that was already drawn and added intersection lines.

4 pages of the Form Intersections

7:09 PM, Sunday October 31st 2021

It's quite common for people to feel like they don't fully grasp the form intersections exercise, if you feel like you may fall into this category try not to stress too much. This exercise is just meant to get students to start thinking about how their forms relate to one another in 3D space, and how to define those relationships on the page. We'll be going over them more in the upcoming lessons.Your forms are looking quite solid here and they believably appear to belong in the same cohesive 3D space, good work. I'm glad that you attempted to draw your intersections this time around.

I'll be moving you on to lesson 3, keep practicing previous exercises as warm ups and good luck.

Next Steps:

Move on to lesson 3.

This critique marks this lesson as complete.
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